Tuesday, 27 December 2011

A fellow Nessie researcher drew my attention to this sighting from 2002 which I thought deserved a rerun and was worthy of a wider distribution in the cause of demonstrating that Nessie continues to be alive and well.

The witness is Tim Richardson and one of the reasons I like this sighting is because Tim is one of those people I would class as competent due to his long interest in angling. He has been a naturalist and big fish angler for 30 years with the emphasis on big fish such as catfish and carp. So, we would expect Tim to be familiar with most types of aquatic wildlife and not so easily fooled into thinking for some reason that they are Nessie. Tim takes up the story himself.

I myself experienced the creature's presence while standing by the freezing cold flat calm Loch on a bright sunny morning in February 2002.

The day was calm and sunny but temperatures were cold following a hard frost that morning. Standing on the jetty by the castle in Urquhart bay I felt an unprecedented irrational fear sweep over me and I backed off the jetty fast. I walked up the grassy slope feeling foolish not having felt such a feeling ever before strong enough to move me from standing over the cold peaty red - black water.

Now as a very serious fisherman I have spent 30 years intensively spending a great proportion of this time on the banks and shores of hundreds of lakes, lochs, rivers, seas, ponds, and stretches of water, most often all night long. But I've never experienced such a unique feeling of fear before even at 'haunted' locations or in fierce lightning storms or on the darkest of nights miles from civilisation.

I know fish behaviour pretty well and felt something was very 'wrong' when just then I observed trout leaping high out of the water. This was only 200 metres away from my position over far deeper water and these fish were in such a highly excited state, darting about everywhere as if looking to escape something unseen below them. I quickly felt in my bag for my binoculars when I realised I did not need them...

I am more than scientific when it comes to the 'unknown,' requiring measurement and evidence and past records to verify anything unusual. I preferably would experience things 'first hand' before analysing and concluding anything substantial. I did not really think the mythical 'Loch Ness monster' existed except in the minds of fantasists or locals benefiting from the tourist trade in the area.

The major 2 reasons for this was that the entire loch had been under ice during the last ice age, so most likely preventing anything from remaining from previous times. Not only this, but detailed surveys show 'insufficient' fish stocks present in the loch which would appear to not be able to support a population of large animals for sustenance.

Please picture this now, because this is what I observed next: As a fish turns its flank over and rolls just under the surface of the water, it raises the water above it. I have observed this hundreds of times over the years being a big fish angler (mainly of giant catfish and big carp) of 30 years experience. The width, depth and length of the fish is indicated by the dimensions of this water movement discerned by the experienced eye. What this indicated was a massive creature.

For example an average sized large 30 pound carp may move a significant oval shaped area of water at the surface of perhaps to 3 feet. Such a fish would be about 3 feet long and between a foot and a foot and a quarter deep. The surface water movement I observed was about 15 feet long by 10 feet across... I never saw what caused it but I've fished right next to large seals, seen deer swimming in a lake, know very well the depth of sturgeon and dolphins compared to carp and whatever caused this phenomenal water movement was none of these possibilities. This was no killer whale or known cetacean either if that's what you are thinking...

There was a weird fact about my camera which is not uncommon at this loch. It has never failed me in thousands of photographs taken on thousands of bright days or dark even misty nights or on the hottest to the coldest of winter night temperatures. I am very careful to keep the battery at least new or at least 'half full.' On attempting to photograph the water anomaly, the camera failed completely despite calmly retrying. Filming under pressure of speed is not at all new to me with this camera. No photo was achieved.

Once all was calm, as if nothing had ever happened to disturb the completely calm surface of the thousands of feet deep bay without even a ripple present, I tried the camera again. This time it worked; in the 5 years since then, it has never failed either. There is definitely far more to this place than is yet known and not merely electrical anomalies.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/700232

I emailed Tim to get his permission to reprint and he expanded on his views. He is very much in the line of the famous Nessie hunter, Ted Holiday, in believing that the "thing" in Loch Ness is more than mere flesh and blood and has its origins in the paranormal. He also takes from the works of people like Paul Devereux who believe strange things occur along fault lines (such as Loch Ness) due to piezoelectric effects.

The one thing that intrigued me was how the creature managed to stay just below the surface and this made me immediately think of the recent Jon Rowe photograph and my speculation that something was just visible below the surface too and pushing up a thin layer of water (see link).

The failing camera is also classic Ted Holiday, he himself saw significance in such mechanical failures, as well as sightings which were just beyond the reach of LNIB cameras. Of course, we would also point out that, statistically, most photographs will be beyond "evidence range" purely by reason of the loch's vast size. If Nessie surfaces at the centre line of the loch, then it is already 800 to 1200 metres away from shore based witnesses!